Lupu, Peter

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

My philo cronies and I were discussing this over Sunday breakfast. Why don't leftists -- who obviously do not share the characteristic values and beliefs of Islamists -- grant what is spectacularly obvious to everyone else, namely, that radical Islam poses a grave threat to what we in the West cherish as civilization, which includes commitments to free speech, open inquiry, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, freedom to reject religion, and so on? Why do leftists either deny the threat or downplay its gravity?

Here is a quickly-composed list of ten related reasons based on my own thinking and reading and on the contributions of my table mates Peter Lupu and Mike Valle. A work in progress. The reasons are not necessarily in the order of importance. ComBox open!

1. Many leftists hold that no one really believes in the Islamic paradise. The expansionist Soviets could be kept in check by the threat of nuclear destruction because, as communists, they were atheists and mortalists for whom this world is the last stop. But the threat from radical Islam, to a conservative, is far more chilling since jihadis murder in the expectation of prolonged disportation with black-eyed virgins in a carnal post mortem paradise. For them this world is not the last stop but a way station to that garden of carnal delights they are forbidden from enjoying here and now. Most leftists, however, don't take religion seriously, and, projecting, think that no one else really does either despite what they say and pretend to believe. So leftists think that jihadis are not really motivated by the belief in paradise as pay off for detonating themselves and murdering 'infidels.' In this way they downplay the gravity of the threat.

This is a very dangerous mistake based on a very foolish sort of psychological projection! Conservatives know better than to assume that everyone shares the same values, attitudes, and goals. See Does Anyone Really Believe in the Muslim Paradise? which refers to Sam Harris's debate with anthropologist Scott Atran on this point.

2. Leftists tend to think that deep down everyone is the same and wants the same things. They think that Muslims want what most Westerners want: money, cars, big houses, creature comforts, the freedom to live and think and speak and criticize and give offense as they please, ready access to alcohol and other intoxicants, equality for women, same-sex 'marriage' . . . .

3. Leftists typically deny that there is radical evil; the bad behavior of Muslims can be explained socially, politically, and economically. The denial of the reality of evil is perhaps the deepest error of the Left.

4. Leftists tend to think any critique of Islam is an attack on Muslims and as such is sheer bigotry. But this is pure confusion. To point out the obvious, Islam is a religion, but no Muslim is a religion. Muslims are people who adhere to the religion, Islam. Got it?

When a leftist looks at a conservative he 'sees' a racist, a xenophobe, a nativist, a flag-waving, my-country-right-or-wrong jingoist, a rube who knows nothing of foreign cultures and reflexively hates the Other simply as Other. In a word, he 'sees' a bigot. So he thinks that any critique of Islam or Islamism -- if you care to distinguish them -- is motivated solely by bigotry directed at certain people. In doing this, however, the leftist confuses the worldview with its adherents. The target of conservative animus is the destructive political-religious ideology, not the people who have been brainwashed into accepting it and who know no better.

5. Some leftists think that to criticize Islam is racist. But this too is hopeless confusion. Islam is a religion, not a race. There is no race of Muslims. You might think that no liberal-leftist is so stupid as not to know that Islam is not a race. You would be wrong. See Richard Dawkins on Muslims.

6. Many leftists succumb to the Obama Fallacy: Religion is good; Islam is a religion; ergo, Islam is good; ISIS is bad; ergo, ISIS -- the premier instantiation of Islamist terror at the moment -- is not Islamic. See Obama: "ISIL is not Islamic."

7. Leftists tend to be cultural relativists. This is part of what drives the Obama Fallacy. If all cultures are equally good, then the same holds for religions: they are all equally good, and no religion can be said to be superior to any other either in terms of truth value or contribution to human flourishing. Islam is not worse that Christianity or Buddhism; it is just different, and only a bigot thinks otherwise.

But of course most leftists think that all religions are bad, equally bad. But if so, then again one cannot maintain that one is superior to another.

Leftists are also, many of them, moral relativists, though inconsistently so. They think that it is morally wrong (absolutely!) to criticize or condemn the practices of another culture (stoning of adulterers, e.g.) because each culture has its own morality that is valid for it and thus only relatively valid. The incoherence of this ought to be obvious. If morality is relative, then we in our culture have all the justification we need and could have to condemn and indeed suppress and eliminate the barbaric practices of Muslims.

9. Leftists tend to deny reality. The reality of terrorism and its source is there for all to see: not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terroists at the present time are Muslims. Deny that, and you deny reality. But why do leftists deny reality?

A good part of the answer is that they deny it because reality does not fit their scheme. Leftists confuse the world with their view of the world. In their view of the world, people are all equal and religions are all equal -- equally good or equally bad depending on the stripe of the leftist. They want it to be that way and so they fool themselves into thinking that it is that way. Moral equivalency reigns. If you point out that Muhammad Atta was an Islamic terrorist, they shoot back that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian terrorist -- willfully ignoring the crucial difference that the murderous actions of the former derive from Islamic/Islamist doctrine whereas the actions of the latter do not derive from Christian doctrine.

And then these leftists like Juan Cole compound their willful ignorance of reality by denouncing those who speak the truth as 'Islamophobes.' That would have been like hurling the epithet 'Naziphobe' at a person who, in 1938, warned of the National Socialist threat to civilized values. "You, sir, are suffering from a phobia, an irrational fear; you need treatment, not refutation."

When a leftist hurls the 'Islamophobe!' epithet that is his way of evading rational discussion by reducing his interlocutor to someone subrational, someone suffering from cognitive dysfunction. Now how liberal and tolerant and respectful of persons is that?

10. Leftists hate conservatives because of the collapse of the USSR and the failure of communism; hence they reflexively oppose anything conservatives promote or maintain. (This was Peter Lupu's suggestion at our breakfast meeting.) So when conservatives sound the alarm, leftists go into knee-jerk oppositional mode. They willfully enter into a delusional state wherein they think, e.g., that the threat of Christian theocracy is real and imminent, but that there is nothing to fear from Islamic theocracy.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Bill reveals in his post, Could the Meaning of Life Be the Quest for the Meaning of Life, that he “toyed with the notion that the meaning of life just is the search for its meaning.” He concludes that if the meaning of life were merely the searching for it, then there would be no meaning, strictly speaking. Why? In Part A I outline Bill’s reasoning in the form of a reductio where (*) sentences are assumptions and (1*) is the assumption Bill entertains. In Part B I outline Bill’s argument that he gives elsewhere that supports the crucial premises of his Reductio Argument. In Part C I will show that his argument outlined in Part B is not sound and briefly describe a theory that is not subject to his argument.

A. Bill’s Reductio Argument

Suppose for the sake of the argument that

1*. The meaning of life is identical to the search for meaning;

2. If the meaning of life is the search for it, then the meaning of life is subjective;

3. If the meaning of life is subjective, then life has no meaning;

4. If the meaning of life is the search for it, then life has no meaning; (from 2 and 3)

Therefore,

5. If life has meaning, then it cannot be identical to the search for meaning; (from 4)

Suppose one holds that

6*. Life has meaning.

It follows that

7. Necessarily, the meaning of life is not identical to the search for meaning.

Therefore,

7. (1*) is false.

BV responds: So far, so good, except that there is no call for the importation of the modal operator 'necessarily' in (7). (7) follows from the conjunction of (5) and (6), but from the necessity of the consequence one cannot validly infer the necessity of the consequent. The modal fallacy is explained here. I am not denying that (7) is necessarily true; I think it is. My point is that its necessity is not supported by the premises Peter adduces.

Bill wholeheartedly endorses the view that the search for meaning is necessary in order to enjoy a meaningful life. He rejects, however, (1*) (his (1)), I suspect due to something like the argument I outlined above. However, I do not think that Bill’s short post and my outline of his argument tells the most important part of the story; far from it.

B. Bill’s Sling-Shot Argument

Bill’s reductio argument heavily depends upon premises (2) and (3). Both are in dire need of justification. Bill offers no such justification in this post, but he does in some others. What justifies premises (2) and (3)? I will outline what I take to be Bill’s argument for (2) and (3) and call it “Bill’s Sling-Shot Argument”.

I think Bill has in mind an argument he gave in a previous post titled “We Cannot Be the Source of Our Own Existential Meaning” (Saturday, September 22, 2012 at 12:49 pm; henceforth, ‘EM’). We are assuming throughout that by ‘meaning’ we do not mean linguistic meaning, but rather what Bill calls existential meaning.

Bill thinks that any theory of meaning that identifies meaning with a source internal to the individual will ultimately collapse into an eliminativist theory: i.e., a theory that denies that there is any meaning to life. Premises (2) and (3) together summarize this view. It follows, then, that if there is going to be any meaning to life, then its source must be external to the individual.

Why should one think that any internalist theory of meaning collapses into an eliminativist theory? Bill offers what I have called the “Sling-Shot-Argument” in order to establish this claim. Bill thinks that all internalist theories are subject to the Sling-Shot Argument. Below is Bill’s Sling-Shot-Argument:

(SI) All internalist theories are committed to the view that the source of meaning is some action (typically mental) of individuals.

(SII) If the source of meaning is some action(s) of individuals, then meaning itself is a consequence of such actions.

(SIII) If meaning is a consequence of actions of individuals, then there cannot be any meaning prior to, and independently from, the resulting consequences of such actions.

(SIV) But “logically and temporally” (EM) individuals must exist prior to undertaking any meaning-bestowal actions and actions must exist prior to their consequences.

The “Sling-Shot-Argument”purports to show that any internalist theory must collapse into an eliminativist theory. Is the Sling-Shot-Argument sound? I don’t think so.

C. The Sling-Shot Criticized

I deny premise (SI) of Bill’s Sling-Shot-Argument: i.e., I deny that all internalist theories must hold that the source of meaning is some action of individuals and that, therefore, meaning is a consequence of such actions. I deny this premise because I think that it is compatible with an internalist theory to hold that the source of meaning (or its ground) is a certain kind of property that all individual agents possess; namely, the potential of self-reflection. Actions (mental or otherwise) enter the picture only as the means to realize this potential. The picture is this. The meaning of life is the potential to self-reflect. All agents have the potential to self-reflect in virtue of being agents. Therefore, all agents have meaning to their life essentially and not merely as a result of the consequences of undertaking certain actions. The more one self-reflects (i.e., performs suitable mental actions), the more one realizes this potential and, therefore, the more one fulfills the meaning of his life. So far as I can see, this version of an internalist account, which we may call The Potentiality Account of Meaning (PAM) is not vulnerable to Bill’s Sling-Shot-Argument. Therefore, such an internalist theory does not collapse into an eliminativist theory. Hence, Bill’s Sling-Shot-Argument is not sound. I view Thomas Nagel’s theory of the meaning of life as a good example of an internalist theory which is at heart a PAM.

BV asks: reference?

Nevertheless, I agree with Bill that (1*) is too strong. The meaning of life is not identical to the search for meaning, if by ‘search’ we mean undertaking certain actions the consequences of which result in a meaningful life. On the other hand, if we think of searching for meaning as essentially a self-reflective activity, then searching for meaning is essential in order to realize the meaning of our life; namely, the potential we already posses. Therefore, viewed in this light, searching for meaning just is part of having meaning.

Response

Peter tells us that we have a certain power or potential, the potential to reflect upon our lives. I of course agree. Peter then goes on to say, rather more controversially, that "The meaning of life is the potential to self-reflect." His thought is that our lives have meaning in virtue of their possession of a certain dispositional property (the property of being disposed to self-reflect). This is a property that we all have, and indeed essentially as opposed to accidentally. Since we have the property essentially, it is not in our power to either possess it or not, which implies that our possessing it is not a consequence of anything we say or do. The possession of theproperty is thus not a consequence of acts of meaning bestowal. So if the meaning of life consists in the possession of this dispositional property, then the meaning of life is objective as opposed to subjective. And yet on Peter's theory, meaning is endogenic rather than exogenic: it has its source in us, not in something outside of us such as God. Peter's theory, then, is a theory on which the meaning of life is both objective and internal.

If Peter is right, then I am wrong. For what I maintain is that internalist theories of existential meaning, according to which meaning is conferred upon one's life by acts of meaning-bestowal, are unable to confer meaning upon the objective presupposition of meaning-bestowal, namely, the acts themselves and their subjects, which acts and subjects must be logically and temporally prior to the meanings bestowed. In consequence, internalist theories deliver only subjective meaning. But if the meaning of life can only be subjective, then there is no such thing as THE meaning of life.

Do I have a good reason to reject Peter's theory? He tells us that "The meaning of life is the potential to self-reflect." But surely the actual meaning of my life -- if it has one -- cannot be identified with a power I possess, a power that is what it is whether or not it is ever exercised. A man who lives the unexamined life, who goes through life unreflectively, never pondering the why or the wherefore, arguably lives a meaningless life despite his power to reflect. I am assuming that one cannot live meaningfully without choosing and appropriating meanings -- which acts require reflection. But now suppose our man begins to actualize his reflection potential. Now his life begins to acquire actual meaning by his choices and decisions. But now the problem I raised arises again. The decisions and choices whereby a person's life acquires actual and concrete meaning are, in themselves, meaningless, as is their subject.

Peter is telling us that there is a property objective and essential possession of which by individuals confers existential meaning upon them. But of course they cannot have this or any property unless they exist. Since their existence cannot be accounted for by their possession of this or any property, the meaning (purpose) of their existence cannot be accounted for by possession of this or any property.

I go to Peter. I ask him, "What is the purpose of my existence?" He tells me, "The purpose of your existence and of every agent's is to reflect on its existence." That seems no better than saying: You exist for no purpose except to reflect on your purposeless existence.

Friday, June 22, 2012

This is a post from the old blog. It originally appeared on 27 May 2008 and appears now slightly redacted.

***********

In this blogging game you throw out your line and damned if you don't snag a good catch now and again. I dredged up Peter Lupu from the Internet's vasty deeps long about January [2008] and I'm glad I did. He's smart and has an admirable passion for philosophy, that highest and most beautiful of all human pursuits. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is his ability to keep his passion alive in the midst of the mundane quest for the buck that keeps the wolf from the door, the lupus from the Lupu.

Enough of cleverness and encomium. Back to work.

In a comment [now lost in the ether], Peter mentions three points of difference between me and him on the topic of existence.

First, he denies my assertion that Frege and Russell are eliminativists about singular existence, though he agrees with me that for neither is existence attributable to individuals. Let's leave this topic for later. Second, Peter thinks that Kant denies that existence is a property of individuals and that Kant anticipates Frege and Russell on existence. This is a bad mistake that almost every analytic philosopher makes; Peter is in truly excellent company. It too deserves a separate discussion. [And receives it in a forthcoming article, "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis."]

Third, Peter seems to think that the fact that everything exists shows that existence cannot be a property of individuals. This is the question I propose to discuss in today's installment.

We agree: everything exists, which is to say: there are no nonexistent items, pace Alexius von Meinong. Existence, then, is not classificatory: it does not divide a sum-total of items into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subgroups, the existent items and the nonexistent items. There are no nonexistent items. Peter mentions rationality, weight, and temperature. Some things have weight, some things don't. And the same goes for the other properties. Because some things are rational and others are not, Peter suggests that it makes sense to inquire into what it is for something to be rational. But since absolutely everything exists, it makes no sense, Peter suggests, to inquire into what it is for something to exist. Existence lacks content due to a failure of contrast. Peter seems to be offering us a

Contrast Argument

1. If a term 'F' has an explicable content, then there must be items to which 'F' does not apply. 2. There are no items to which 'being' or 'existent' does not apply. Ergo 3. 'Being' or 'existent' does not have an explicable content..

In point of validity, this argument is unobjectionable: it is an instance of Modus Tollens. But it is unsound. The following consideration suffices to refute the first premise. Since everything is self-identical, it is true to say of any particular thing that it is self-identical. But 'self-identical' is not rendered either without sense or content by the plain fact that nothing is self-diverse. Or consider the proposition that every event has a cause. Suppose it is true. (And suppose that everything at bottom is an event.) Then every event has the property of being caused and no event lacks this property. But it does not follow that we cannot ask what it is for an event to be caused. The different theories of causation would be answers to this question.

I don't think we need to waste any more words on the first premise. It is obviously false.But even if you insist that (1) is true, there is still a problem with the argument. Although (2) is true, it does not have the implication one might think it to have. One might think that if everything exists,then it is unintelligible to suppose that there is a difference between existence and nonexistence. But this is a non sequitur. For although it is true that there is nothing that does not exist, a contingent being that does exist is possibly such that it does not exist. So there is a contrast after all. It is the contrast between existence and possible nonexistence. Each contingent individual faces the contrast: existence versus possible nonexistence. With apologies to the Bard, "To be or [possibly] not to be, that is the question."

It is quite clear that the difference between existence and nonexistence cannot be explained by giving examples of existents and examples of nonexistents. Pace Meinong and the Meinongians, there are no examples or instances of nonexistents. One could put this by saying that the existence/nonexistence contrast does not show up extensionally and indeed cannot. But how it is supposed to follow from this that there is nothing real in things that grounds the application of 'exists' to them? I exist. I am not nothing. But I might never have come to exist. And given that I do exist now, I might not have existed now. This 'property' of existing is of course no ordinary property. It is not like the properties of being red, or ripe, or spheroid. But I have it and I might not have. And so there is a contrast, situated at the level of each contingent individual, between its existence and its possible nonexistence.

Peter claimed that since absolutely everything exists, it makes no sense to inquire into what it is for something to exist. I just rebutted his claim by pointing out that Contrast Arguments are in in general unsound and by pointing out that, with respect to existence there is after all a contrast, the contrast between the existence of a contingent individual and its possible nonexistence.

It seems to me that there is a rather obvious mistake that one ought to avoid. And that is to assume that existence or Being is a highest what-determination. The mistake is to think of 'being' as a maximally general term which, due to its all-inclusive extension, is virtually nil in intension. Here is an example of how the mistake is made:

The distinction between 'being' and, for example, 'dog,' is then a distinction between the more general and the less general. This is a logical or cognitional distinction, which does not necessarily reflect anything in the nature of things. Nor does it necessarily point to any real composition within things. It is analogous to the distinction made between 'animal' and 'dog' when it is said that Rover is a dog and Rover is an animal, which distinction does not point to two distinct principles within Rover: dog and animal. Rover is a dog who is an animal, an animal who is a dog. His being a dog and his being an animal are the same in him, even though there are other animals. Similarly, Rover is both a being and a dog: there are other beings, but this does not change the fact that for him, to be a dog is to be a being, to be a being is to be a dog. (John N. Deck, "Metaphysics or Logic?" The New Scholasticism, Spring 1989, 232-233)

This passage shows that Deck is thinking of being as a highest genus. Rover is a dog, an animal, a living thing, a physical thing . . . a being. On this way of thinking, being is the most generalwhat-determination. You can arrive at it by climbing the tree of Porphyry to the very top. But if anything is clear, it should be that Being or existence is not a summum genus or genus generallisimum as Aristotle pointed out at 998b22 of the Metaphysics. And as Kant pointed out in his famous discussion, Being or existence is not a reales Praedikat: Being or existence is no part of what a thing is.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

What follows is a guest post by Peter Lupu with some additions and corrections by BV. 'CCB' abbreviates 'concrete contingent being.' The last post in this series is here. Thanks again to Vlastimil Vohamka for pointing us to Maitzen's article, which has proven to be stimulating indeed.

1. As a general rule, dummy sortals such as ‘thing’, ‘object’, ‘CCB’, etc., are not referential terms, unless there is an explicit or implicit background presupposition as to which sortal term is intended as a replacement. This presupposition, if satisfied, fixes the referent of the dummy sortal. In the absence of the satisfaction of such a presupposition, sentences in which they are used (not mentioned) have no truth-conditions and questions in which they are used (not mentioned) have no answer-conditions.

2. Examples such as ‘Cats are CCBs’ are no exception. Either this sentence has no truth-conditions because the term ‘CCB’ is merely a place holder for an unspecified sortal or it should be understood along the lines of: ‘Cats are animals’, etc., where ‘animal’ is (one possible) substitution term for the dummy sortal ‘CCB.'

BV adds: Right here I think a very simple objection can be brought against the semantic thesis. We know that cats exist, we know that they are concrete, and we know that they are contingent. So we know that 'Cats are concrete contingent beings' is true. Now whatever is true is meaningful (though not vice versa). Therefore, 'Cats are concrete contingent beings' is meaningful. Now if a sentence is meaningful, then its constituent terms are meaningful. Hence 'CCB' is meaningful despite its being a dummy sortal. I would also underscore a point I have made several times before. The immediate inference from the admittedly true (a) to (b) below is invalid:

a. The question 'How many CCBs are there?' is unanswerable, hence senseless

ergo

b. The question 'Why are there any CCBs?' is unanswerable, hence senseless.

3. The semantic thesis is the driving force behind Steve M’s view. It is the fallback position in all of his responses to challenges by Bill, Steven, and others. So far as I can tell, Steve M. did not defend the general form of the semantic thesis in his original paper. It is, therefore, surprising that it has been ignored by almost everyone in these discussions and that neither Bill nor Steven challenged the semantic thesis. I have written an extensive comment on this thesis and challenged it on several grounds.

B. Explanatory Thesis

1. As a general rule, Why-Questions are answered by giving an explanation. ‘Why are there any CCBs?’ is a [explanation-seeking] Why-Question. [It is worth noting that the grammatically interrogative form of words 'Why is there anything at all?' could be used simply to express wonder that anything at all should exist, and not as a demand for an explanation.] Therefore, it invites an explanation. What sort of explanation? Steve M. holds two theses about this last question:

(MI) The Adequacy Thesis: empirical explanations typical in science offer (at least in principle) adequate explanations for the Why-CCBs question, provided the Why-CCB questions are meaningful at all (and their meaningfulness is a function of satisfying the semantic thesis);

(MII) The Completeness Thesis: Once an empirical explanation is given to Why CCBs?, there is nothing left to explain. And in any case there are no suitable forms of explanation beyond empirical explanations that could be even relevant to explain Why-CCBs?

2. Bill and Steven certainly deny (MII). They may also have some reservations about MI. What is the basis on which Bill and Steven challenge MII? They maintain that even if we assume that an adequate empirical explanation is offered (i.e., MI is satisfied) to each and every CCB, there is something else left over to explain. What is that “something else” that is left over that needs explaining (Steve M. asks)?

3. It is at this juncture that the discussion either reverts back to the semantic thesis or it needs to be advanced into a new metaphysical realm.

C. Metaphysical Thesis

Dummy sortals do not pick out any properties or universals (monadic or relational) except via the mediation of genuine sortals. i.e., there are no properties over and beyond those picked out by genuine sortals.

1. Steven attempted to answer the challenge posed by the question at the end of B2 in one of his posts. His answer is this: what is left over after all empirical explanations favored by Steve M. are assumed to have been given is a very general property, feature, or aspect that all CCBs, and only CCBs, have in common. So why shouldn't ‘Why-CCBs’ questions be understood as inquiring into an explanation of this general feature that all and only CCBs share? Call this alleged general feature ‘X’.

2. The dispute has turned to whether X has any content, i.e., Steve M. challenged the contention that there is any phenomenon described by X that was not already accounted for by his favorite empirical explanations. Bill and Steven tried to articulate the content of X without (apparently) noticing that every such effort was rebutted by Steve M. either by appealing to the semantic thesis or to the explanatory thesis or both.

3. So what could X be? I suggest the following: X is the (second-order) property such that the property of *is a contingent being* is instantiated (or something along these lines). [I would put it this way: X is the being-instantiated of the property of being a contingent being.]

4. Since the universal/property *is a contingent being* need not be instantiated, the fact that it is in fact instantiated in the actual world (i.e., that X holds) needs explaining (So claim Bill and Steven). And whatever is the explanation (including a “brute-fact” explanation) for this fact, it cannot take the form of an empirical explanation.

5. The Metaphysical Thesis I am attributing to Steve M. of course rules out that there is a property such as X. Why? Two reasons: first, the property *is a contingent being* is not a sortal property; second, the predicate ‘is a contingent being’ (or any of its variants) contains a dummy sortal and therefore it does not pick out a property (nor does it have an extension) in the absence of a specific background presupposition of a specific sortal substituend.

D. Conclusion

Unless these three theses are clearly separated, the discussion will be going in circles. As one can see, the driving force behind the explanatory and metaphysical theses is ultimately the semantic thesis. No one challenged this thesis directly (except me in a comment that was ignored by everyone with the exception of Bill).

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Peter Lupu left the following comment which deserves to be separately posted. I supplement Peter's thoughts with a quotation from Mary Midgley and some commentary.

In philosophical discourse the phrase "I do not understand" when stated about a philosophical position can mean either

(i) this position is so obscure that there is nothing in it to understand; or

(ii) this position is subject to several obvious objections (which I need not spell out) and therefore I fail to see how anyone can hold and/or propose it; or

(iii) this position is so difficult, abstract, and/or complex that I am unable to wrap my head around it.

Sense (iii) is not philosophical trash-talk. It is typically stated by a philosophical novice who really does not yet grasp the nature of philosophical positions or by a professional who is grappling with a genuinely difficult position and attempts to make sense of it.

Senses (i) and (ii), on the other hand, are too often used by opponents of a position as philosophical trash-talk. Their purpose is to intimidate the proponents of a position. The method goes something like this.

Example of Philosophical Trash-Talk:

"You and I agree that I am not a philosophical novice; given this assumption, if your position were not irreparably obscure, I would understand it; I do not understand it; therefore, it is irreparably obscure."

Now the proponent of the position so challenged has two options: he can defend the coherence of his position or else he must challenge the credentials of the opponent who uses a version of trash-talk exemplified above. Since many gentle souls would prefer not to opt for the later option, they are forced to defend the coherence of their position against challenges not yet stated. This achieves the intended purpose of the opponent to turn the burden on the proponent without having to do much except trash-talk.

Trash-talk has no place in philosophical discourse. A phrase such as "I do not understand" should be used only in sense (iii) either by a philosophical novice or by a professional who uses it to express their genuine effort to understand a difficult position and give it the most charitable reading. If a professional uses it in any other sense, they are trash-talking which, I hope we all agree, betrays the essence of philosophical inquiry.

Mary Midgley in The Owl of Minerva: A Memoir, Routledge, 2005, p. 13, reminisces about her headmistress, Miss Annie Bowden:

I also remember something striking that she had said when I had complained that I knew the answer to some question but I just couldn't say it clearly. 'If you can't say a thing clearly,' she replied, 'then you don't actually know what it is, do you?' This is a deep thought which I have often come back to, and it is in general a useful one. It lies at the heart of British empiricism. Though it is not by any means always true, I am glad to have had it put before me so early in life. It's a good thought to have when you are trying to clarify your own ideas, but a bad one when you are supposed to be understanding other people's. Philosophers are always complaining that other people's remarks are not clear when what they mean is that they are unwelcome. So they often cultivate the art of not understanding things -- something which British analytic philosophers are particularly good at. (Bolding added.)

My added emphasis signals my approbation.

We owe it to ourselves and our readers to be as clear as we can. But the whole point of philosophy is to extend clarity beyond the 'clarity' of everyday life and everyday thinking. The pursuit of this higher clarity, the attempt to work our way out of Plato's Cave, results in a kind of talking and thinking that must appear obscure to the Cave dweller. Well, so much the worse for him and his values. To demand Cave clarity of the philosopher is vulgar and philistine.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

I want to give you a heads up on the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil". The phrase is probably an idiom that means something like 'universal wisdom' or 'all knowledge'. A better translation may be 'The Tree of the Knowledge of Everything From A to Z'. There is, in fact, nothing in the story that indicates that Adam and Eve had no free will before the eating of the fruit. God, in fact, gives them orders that presuppose the freedom to disobey...to tend the garden, to refrain from eating some fruit, etc. The eating of the Tree was literally to eat of the fruit that gives one the wisdom of God, to overcome the limits God had placed on them and become more like Him. And the result is the clothing of the self, and later the tilling of soil and animal husbandry and after Cain the building of cities. It is not 'moral' knowledge they are coming to but the knowledge of what it takes to enact their own wills to 'get what they want...things like technology and the building of cities.

Peace and Blessings,Joshua Orsak

1. The crux of the matter is indeed the interpretation of 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.' So one question for Mr Orsak is how he would support his interpretation. After all, the phrase speaks of the knowledge of good and evil, not the knowledge of all things.

2. In yesterday's post I did not say that Adam and Eve did not have freedom of the will before eating the forbidden fruit; I said that they were not moral agents before eating it. I specified two individually necessary conditions of moral agency (and I left open the question whether they are jointly sufficient). The one is free will and the other is knowledge of the difference between good and evil. Since both conditions are necessary, absence of either prevents a being from being a moral agent. So what I was arguing is consistent with Adam's and Eve's possession of free will prior to their eating of the forbidden fruit.

3. The point I was making (and I got this from Peter Lupu, to give credit where credit is due) was that there is something prima facie puzzling about Genesis 2 & 3. Roughly: How can God justly banish Adam and Eve from paradise for disobedience prior to their knowing the difference between good and evil?

4. Orsak's solution is to interpret 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil' as referring to a tree the eating of the fruit of which confers all knowledge. I agree that if this interpretation is defensible, then the puzzle collapses. But what considerations speak for Orsak's interpretation? After all, the most natural way to interpret 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil' is to interpret it as referring to a tree the eating of the fruit of which confers either (i) the knowledge that there is an objective difference between good and evil, or (ii) the knowledge of which actions/omissions are good and which evil, or (iii) both.

Monday, September 05, 2011

At Genesis 2,17 the Lord forbids Adam from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, on pain of death. In the next chapter, however, Eve is tempted by the serpent, succumbs, eats of the tree, and persuades Adam to eat of it too. As punishment for their disobedience, Adam and Eve are banished from the garden of Eden and put under sentence of death. Thus mortality is one of the wages of Original Sin.

The story has a puzzling feature that Peter Lupu made me see. Let us agree that a moral agent is a being that (i) possesses free will, and (ii) possesses knowledge of the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. Clearly, both conditions are necessary for moral agency. And let us agree that no agent can be justly punished unless he is a moral agent and does something wrong. But before eating from the tree, Adam and Eve are not moral agents. For it is only by eating from the tree that they acquire the knowledge of good and evil, one of the necessary conditions of moral agency. And yet God punishes them. How then can his punishment be just? My problem concerns not the truth of the story, but its coherence and meaning. The problem can be set forth as an aporetic pentad:

1. If God punishes, God punishes justly.2. If God punishes an agent justly, then that agent is a moral agent that deliberately does something wrong.3. A moral agent possesses the knowledge of good and evil.4. God punishes Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit.5. Adam and Eve did not possess the knowledge of good and evil prior to eating the forbidden fruit.

The pentad is logically inconsistent: the first four limbs entail the negation of the fifth. To rescue the coherence of the story one of the limbs must be rejected. But which one?

(1), (3), and (4) are undeniable. This leaves (2) and (5). One might think to deny (2). My dog is not a moral agent, but I can justly punish it for some behavior. But punishment in this sense is mere behavior-modification and not relevant to the case at hand. So it appears that the only way out is by denying (5). Adam and Eve did possess the knowledge of good and evil prior to eating the forbidden fruit. If so, the so-called 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' is not a tree the eating of the fruit of which is necessary for becoming a moral agent.

Support for this way out can be found at Genesis 1, 26: "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness . . . ." This image, I argue, is a spiritual image. You would have to be quite the lunkheaded atheist/materialist to think that the image is a physical one. Now if God created man in his spiritual image, then presumably that means that God created man to be a moral agent, a free being who is alive to the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong. So before receiving the command not to eat of the tree of good and evil, Adam and Eve were already moral agents. On this interpretation, whereby (5) is rejected, the coherence of the story is upheld.

"But then why is the tree in question called 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'?" I have no idea.

Another intriguing suggestion that Peter Lupu made to me in conversation was that the Genesis story recounts not the Fall of man, but his rise or ascent from a pre-human condition of animal innocence to the status of a moral being possessing the knowledge of good and evil. This makes sense if if it is by eating the forbidden fruit that man first become man in the full theomorphic sense. And so, to put it quite pointedly, it is only by disobeying the divine command that Adam becomes a son of God! Before that he wallows in a state of animal-like, pre-human inocence. Now surely a God worth his salt would not want mere pets; what he would want are sons and daughters capable of participating in the divine life. He wants his 'children' to be moral agents. Indeed, one might go so far as to suppose -- and this I think is the direction in which Peter is headed -- that God wants them to be autonomous moral agents, agents who are not merely (libertarianly) free, and awake to the distinction between good and evil, but who in addition are morally self-legislative, i.e., who give the law to themselves, as opposed to existing heteronomously in a condition where the law is imposed on them by God.

The trajectory of this interpretation is towards secular humanism. God fades out and Man comes into his own. I don't buy it, but that's another post.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

A guest post by Peter Lupu. Minor edits and a comment (in blue) by BV.

In an intriguing paper “God and Moral Autonomy”, James Rachels offers what he calls “The Moral Autonomy Argument” against the existence of God. The argument is based on a certain analysis of the concept of worship and its alleged incompatibility with moral autonomy (pp. 9-10; all references are to the Web version). I will first present Rachels’ argument verbatim. Next I will point out that in order for the argument to be valid, additional premises are required. I will then supply the additional premises and recast the argument accordingly in a manner consistent with what I take to be Rachels’ original intent. While the resulting argument is valid, I will argue that it is not sound. Despite its deficiency, however, Rachels’ argument points towards something important. In the final section I will try to flesh out this important element.

Rachels’ Argument Verbatim (p. 10):

“1. If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship.

2. No being could possibly be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one’s role as an autonomous moral agent.

3. Therefore, there cannot be any being who is God.”

Obviously, this argument is not valid. While the two premises have the form of if-then conditionals, the conclusion is not a conditional statement. There is no way of deriving an unconditional statement from conditional premises alone. Clearly, some additional premises are required. Let me now recast the argument in a valid form. I shall take the liberty to reword some of the premises so that their logical form is more apparent.

(A) FirstModified Argument from Moral Autonomy:

1*) Necessarily, if God exists, then God is a fitting object of worship;

2*) If worship requires abandoning autonomous moral agency, then it is not the case that God is a fitting object of worship;

3*) Worship requires abandoning autonomous moral agency.

Therefore,

4*) God does not exist.

Argument (A) is valid. The question is whether it is sound. Rachels maintains that premise (1*) is something like a logical truth. He says: “That God is not to be judged, challenged, defied, or disobeyed is at bottom a truth of logic. To do any of these things is incompatible with taking him as one to be worshiped.” (p. 8). So we are asked to assume that the very concept of God includes the concept of being worthy or fitting of worship, in the sense that being worthy or fitting of worship logically excludes one from being able to judge, challenge, defy, or disobey God. Let us grant this claim for now.

Rachels further claims that premise (3*) is supported by “a long tradition in moral philosophy, from Plato to Kant,…” (p. 9). Such support would go something like this. Worshiping any being worthy of worship requires the worshiper to recognize such a being as having absolute authority. Absolute authority in turn entails an “unqualified claim of obedience.” (p.9). But, no human being, qua autonomous moral agent, can recognize an “unqualified claim of obedience”. Hence, no human being qua autonomous moral agent can recognize any such absolute authority. Therefore, human beings cannot worship God without abandoning their autonomous moral agency.

What about premise (2*)? I think premise (2*) is false. And this fact reveals the underlying problem with Rachels’ argument. For suppose that the antecedent of premise (2*) is true. Does it follow from this fact alone that God is not a fitting object for worship? No such thing follows, for it may still be true that God is a fitting object of worship by creatures that are not autonomous moral agents. Or to put the matter somewhat more precisely: even if we suppose that worship requires abandoning autonomous moral agency, what follows from this assumption is that God is not a fitting object of worship by a being, qua autonomous moral agent. Of course, God may still be a fitting object of worship by a being as long as that being abandons their autonomy while worshiping.

If this is correct, then premise (2*) is false and, therefore, argument (A) is not sound. Clearly, we need to modify Rachels’ argument once again:

(B) Second Modified Argument from Moral Autonomy:

(1**) Necessarily, if God exists, then God is a fitting object of worship by autonomous moral agents;

(2**) If worship requires abandoning autonomous moral agency, then it is not the case that God is a fitting object of worship by autonomous moral agents;

(3**) Worship requires abandoning autonomous moral agency;

Therefore,

(4**) God does not exist.

Argument (B) is also valid. Is it sound? I believe that a theist may legitimately reject premise (1**). Remember that the necessity in the first premise of each of the above versions of the argument is intended by Rachels to express the claim that the very concept of God logically entails the concept of being worthy of worship, where being worthy (or fitting) of worship logically excludes judging, challenging, defying, or disobeying God. But, clearly, an activity that logically rules out judging, challenging, defying or disobeying another being is an activity that logically requires abandoning the exercise of autonomous moral agency. And a theist may quite legitimately object to such a conception of God. In particular, a theist may consistently maintain that the exercise of worshiping God is not logicallyinconsistent with judging, challenging, defying, or even disobeying God. And if worshiping is not logically inconsistent with any of these activities, then worshiping is not logically inconsistent with maintaining one’s autonomous moral agency. Therefore, a theist can legitimately reject premise (1**). Therefore, the argument cannot be sound.

Comment by BV: It is not clear why the theist could not reject (3**). Why does worship require the abandonment of autonomous moral agency? Granted, if x is God, then God has absolute authority, which includes the right to command and the right to be obeyed. But equally, if if x is indeed God, then God will not command anything immoral; he will not command anything that would not coincide with what we would impose on ourselves if we are acting autonomously. Contrapositively, if x commands anything which is by our moral lights immoral, such as the slaughtering of one's innocent son, then x is not God.

Rachels attempts to meet this objection as follows: "Thus our own judgment that some actions are right and others wrong is logically prior to our recognition of any being as God. The upshot is that we cannot justify the suspension of our own judgment on the grounds that we are deferring to God's command; for if, by our own best judgment, the command is wrong, this gives us good reason to withhold the title "God" from the commander." True, but why should we think that obeying God ever involves suspending our own judgment? Rachels is assuming that there are circumstances in which there is a discrepancy between what God commands and what the creature knows is right. But it is open to the theist to deny that there are ever any such circumstances. In the case of Abraham and Isaac, the theist can say that what Abraham thought was a divine command did not come from God at all. Of course, the Bible portrays the command as coming from God, but the theist is under no obligation to take at face value everything that is in the Bible.

Kant, who was a theist, famously remarked that two things filled him with wonder: "the starry skies above me, and the moral law within me." Now the moral law stands above me as a sensible (phenomenal) being subject to inclinations. It is in one sense outside me as commanding my respect and my submission to its dictates. In respecting the universal moral law do I abandon my autonomy? Not at all. I am truly autonomous only in fulfilling the moral law. So the theist could say that God and the moral law are one, and that worshipping God is like respecting the moral law. Just as it is no injury to my autonomy that the moral law imposes restrictions on my behavior, it is no injury to my autonomy that God issues commands. We needn't follow Rachels in assuming that there is a discrepancy between what God commands and what by our lights (when they are 'shining properly') it is right to do.

If God is a tyrant for whom might makes right, then I grant that worship and autonomy are incompatible. But if the object of worship is a concrete embodiment of the moral law that is in me, the following of which constitutes my autonomy, then worship and autonomy are not incompatible.

I wish now to propose an argument, similar to Rachels, but without the objectionable assumptions accompanying the first premise of Rachels’ argument. Let us stipulate that the term ‘God!’ expresses the concept of a being that is just like the theistic concept of God, except that the following is true of this being:

(!) God! is worthy or fitting of submission; where fitting of submission logicallyexcludes judging, challenging, defying, or disobeying God!.

With the help of (!) I shall now restate Rachels’ argument and prove that God! does not exist, provided autonomous moral agents exist. The argument assumes that at least some autonomous moral agents exist.

(C) Third Modified Argument from Moral Autonomy.

(1!) Necessarily, if God! exists, then God! is a fitting object of submission by autonomous moral agents;

(2!) If submission requires abandoning autonomous moral agency, then it is not the case that God! is a fitting object of submission by autonomous moral agents;

(3!) Submission requires abandoning autonomous moral agency;

Therefore,

(4!) God! does not exist.

Argument (C) is valid. Is it sound? I think it is. I think that every one of the premises is true and I am willing to defend this claim. Premise (1!) is true by stipulation. Premise (3!) is also true. For submission requires recognizing the absolute authority of another and doing so is not possible while retaining ones autonomy. What about premise (2!)? Premise (2!) might initially appear somewhat strange. But premise (2!) simply states the consequences of our stipulation regarding the concept of God!, when this concept is applied to the requirement that autonomous agents must submit to a being such as God!. I think that given the stipulation expressed by (!), premise (2!) is true. Hence, it is true that God! does not exist.

A theist of course would be correct to vehemently deny that the concept of God! as stipulated is identical to the concept of God in his sense: i.e.,that his concept of God includes (!). And it follows, then, that such a theist must also deny that worship is the same as submission. In particular, such a theist must deny that his God requires submission from autonomous agents. But, then, such a theist must cease to include in the concept of worship elements that belong more properly to the concept of submission.

It also follows that any religion, religious institution, or religious figure that promotes the idea that worshiping a deity requires submission to this deity presupposes that such a deity is God!. But since a being such as God! cannot exist alongside with autonomous moral agents that are required to submit to such a deity, it follows that anyone who promotes such things is promoting the existence of false gods.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

A guest post by Peter Lupu with some comments in blue by Bill Vallicella.

[This essay is dedicated to the memory of Ann Freitag, my significant other, who passed away on April 17, 2010, 11:30am. She gave me two priceless gifts: Herself and a deep understanding that the love of life is not a mere gesture, but a way of loving every living being.]

The title of this essay expresses what it is like for me to experience an ever ascending spiral of theistic aspirations inhibited by atheist inclinations, and vice versa. My predicament is both intellectual as well as existential. It is a blending of the two that fuels a restless existence, one which propels me to journey on this ascending spiral of unfamiliar territory towards an unknown destination.

I. Why I am not an Atheist

Let me begin with atheism. Atheism is first and foremost a rejection of theism. However, the rejection of theism itself springs from several often misunderstood sources. A deep and personal disappointment with a particular religion frequently converts into a fervent rejection of theism and all that it means. A second source may begin with a genuine delight in the achievements of science which now and then, and quite unnoticeably, spills over into a materialistic metaphysics. The latter, in turn, bluntly opposes theism’s commitment to a transcendent reality. Thus, what starts as a delight in the potential of inquiry to unlock the mysteries of the physical universe migrates into an impatient and often mocking rejection of anything non-physical. Theism is a casualty of such a sentiment.

Monday, April 25, 2011

The following are some recent thoughts about the Trinity. Let me know what you think.

The three expressions of the Trinity: ‘The Father’, ‘The Son’, and ‘The Holy Spirit’ all refer to the same divine being namely God. Thus, with respect to reference, each pair of expressions forms a true identity. However, they have different senses in Frege’s sense. The three senses are as follows:

1) The sense of ‘The Father’ is the will of the divine being to love, atone, and forgive. Call this the divine-will.

2) The sense of ‘The Holy Spirit’ is the will of a non-divine being when and only when it genuinely aspires to be like the divine with respect to its moral identity and worth. Call this the inspired-will.

3) The sense of ‘The Son’ (i.e., the person of Jesus) is when the divine-will and the inspired-will coincide in a human person such as Jesus. Thus, Jesus is a moral-exemplar (Steven’s term) of a case when the divine-will and the inspired-will seamlessly coincide.

The senses of the three expressions of the Trinity are different. Therefore, while identities among each pair with respect to their senses are false, identities with respect to their referents are true.

It warms my heart that a Jew should speculate on the Trinity on Good Friday. Rather than comment specifically on the senses that Peter attaches to 'the Father,' 'the Son,' and 'the Holy Spirit,' I will address the deeper question of whether the logical problem of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity can be solved by means of Gottlob Frege's distinction between the sense and the reference of expressions.

The Logical Problem of the Trinity

Our question concerns the logical consistency of the following septad, each limb of which is a commitment of orthodoxy. See here for details. How can the following propositions all be true?

1. There is only one God.2. The Father is God.3. The Son is God.4. The Holy Spirit is God.5. The Father is not the Son.6. The Son is not the Holy Spirit.7. The Father is not the Holy Spirit.

If we assume that in (2)-(7), the 'is' expresses absolute numerical identity, then it is clear that the septad is inconsistent. (Identity has the following properties: it is reflexive, symmetric, transitive, governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals and by the Necessity of Identity). For example, from (2) and (3) taken together it follows that the Father is the Son by Transitivity of Identity. But this contradicts (5).

So we have an inconsistent septad each limb of which is a commitment of orthodoxy. The task is to remove the contradiction without abandoning orthodoxy. There are different ways to proceed. Here I consider only one, the Fregean way. (Of course, Frege himself did not address the Trinity; but we may address it using his nomenclature and conceptuality.)

The Fregean solution is to say that 'Father,' 'Son,' and 'Holy Spirit, are expressions that differ in sense (Sinn) but coincide in reference (Bedeutung). Frege famously gave the example of 'The morning star is the evening star.' This is an identity statement that is both true and informative. But how, Frege asked, could it be both? If it says of one thing that it is identical to itself, then it is true but not informative because tautological. If it says of two things that they are one thing, then it is false, and uninformative for this reason. How can it be both true and nontautological?

Frege solved his puzzle by distinguishing between sense and reference and by maintaining that reference is not direct but routed through sense. 'Morning star' and 'evening star' differ in sense, but coincide in reference. The terms flanking the identity sign refer to the same entity, the planet Venus, but the reference is mediated by two numerically distinct senses. The distinction allows us to account for both the truth and the informativeness of the identity statement. The statement is true because the two terms have the same referent; the statement is informative because the two terms have different senses. They are different modes of presentation of the same object.

Now let's apply this basic idea to the Trinity. To keep the discussion simple we can restrict ourselves to the Father and the Son. If we can figure out the Binity, then we can figure out the Trinity. And if we restrict ourselves to the Binity, then we get a nice neat parallel to the Fregean example. The Frege puzzle can be put like this:

a. The Morning Star is Venusb. The Evening Star is Venusc. The Morning Star is not the Evening Star.

This parallels

2. The Father is God3. The Son is God5. The Father is not the Son.

Both triads are inconsistent. The solution to the Fregean triad is to replace (c) with c'. The sense Morning Star is not the sense Evening Star.

The suggestion, then, is to solve the Binity triad by replacing (5) with5'. The sense Father is not the sense Son.

The idea, then, is that the persons of the Trinity are Fregean senses. To say that the three persons are one God is to say that the three senses, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, are three distinct modes of presentation (Darstellungsweisen) of the same entity, God.

Why the Fregean Solution Doesn't Work

Bear in mind that we are laboring under the constraint of preserving orthodoxy. So, while the Fregan approach is not incoherent, it fails to preserve the orthodox doctrine. One reason is this. Senses are abstract (causally inert) objects while the persons of the Trinity are concrete (causally efficacious). Thus the Holy Spirit inspires people, causing them to to be in this or that state of mind. The Father begets the Son. Begetting is a kind of causing, though unlike empirical causing. The Son loves the Father, etc. Therefore, the persons cannot be Fregean senses.

Furthermore, senses reside in Frege's World 3 which houses all the Platonica necessary for the semantic mediation of mental contents (ideas, Vorstellungen, etc.) in World 2 and primary referents in World 1. Now God is in World 1. But if the persons are senses, then they are in World 3. But this entails the shattering of the divine unity. God is one, three-in-one, yet still one. But on the Fregean approach what we have is a disjointed quaternity: God in World 1, and the three persons in World 3. That won't do, if the task is to preserve orthodoxy.

At this point, someone might suggest the following. "Suppose we think of senses, not as semantic intermediaries, but as constituents of the entity in World 1. Thus the morning star and the evening star are ontological parts of Venus somewhat along the lines of Hector Castaneda's Guise Theory. To say that a sense S is of its referent R is to say that S is an ontologcal part or constitutent of R. And then we can interpret 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star' to mean that the MS-sense is 'consubstantiated' (to borrow a term from Castaneda) with the ES-sense. Thus we would not have the chorismos, separation, of senses in Worldf3 from the primary referents in World 1: the senses would be where the primary referents are, as ontological parts of them.

But this suggestion also violates orthodoxy. The persons of the Trinity are not parts of God; each is (identically) God. No proper part of a whole is identical to the whole. But each person is identical to God.

I conclude that there is no Fregean way out of the logical difficulties of the orthodox Trinity doctrine. If so, then Peter's specific suggestion above lapses.

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

There are at least two ways in which the relational character and object-directedness of intentional states such as beliefs, wants, desires, seekings, etc., is motivated:

A. The individuation of intentional states;

B. Aristotle’s belief-desire model of explaining actions.

I. Motivation (A). Consider the following:

1) Jake seeks the golden mountain;

2) Jake seeks the keys to his car.

Clearly, (1) and (2) express two different intentional states of the same individual. But, in virtue of what do (1) and (2) express two different intentional states? It appears that the best and only explanation for the difference is that the two cases relate Jake to two different objects: i.e., in (1) Jake seeks the golden mountain; in (2) Jake seeks his car keys; and, of course, the golden mountain and Jake’s car keys are two distinct objects.

The point, though correct, needs to be made with a bit more exactitude. Presumably, the intentional states are numerically distinct in virtue of occurring at different times. If so, someone could reply that what makes the states different is their occurring at different times. The question, however, is not what makes the states token-distinct, but what makes them type-distinct. And the answer can only be that it is distinctness of intentional object that explains type-distinctness of states.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

I suggest we approach the problem, or one of the problems, of intentionality via the following aporetic triad:

1. We sometimes intend the nonexistent.2. Intentionality is a relation.3. Every relation R is such that, if R obtains,then all its relata exist.

This is a nice neat way of formulating the problem because, on the one hand, each limb is extremely plausible while, on the other hand, the limbs appear collectively inconsistent. To solve the problem, one must either reject one of the limbs or show that the inconsistency is merely apparent.

Enter Peter Lupu's solution. He described it to me last night after Christmas dinner. He thinks we can uphold all three propositions. Thus his claim is that the triad is only apparently inconsistent.

Suppose Shaky Jake seeks the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine (LDM). Now seeking things like lost gold mines typically involves all sorts of physical actions; but at the root of, and animating, these actions are various mental states many of which are intentional or objected-directed. Believing, hoping, desiring, fearing, planning -- these are all intentional states. Among them is the state of wanting. To want is to want something. Thus Jake wants, or wants to find, the LDM. But a subject's wanting of x does not entail the existence of x in the way that a subject's owning of x does entail the existence of x. You can't own, beat, eat, etc. what does not exist; but you can desire, imagine, think about, etc. what does not exist. This is a crucial fact about intentionality. Peter of course is well aware of it.

Now either the LDM exists or it does not. If it exists, then Jake's wanting relates him (or his mind) to the LDM in a way that is consistent with the truth of both (2) and (3). If the LDM does not exist, then Jake's wanting relates him (or his mind) to the CONTENT of Jake's mental act. But this too is consistent with the truth of both (2) and (3). For the content exists whether or not the object exists.

In this way, Peter thinks he can uphold each of (1)-(3). Supposing, as is overwhelmingly likely, that the LDM does not exist, (1) is true: Jake intends (in the mode of wanting) something nonexistent. This instance of intentionality is relational: it connects Jake's mind to a content. (2) is thus maintained. But so is (3): Jake's mind and the content both exist.

I will call this a 'surrogate object' solution. It works by substituting the content for the external object when the external object does not exist. This guarantees that there will always be an existent object, either the external object, or the surrogate object to serve as the object relatum of the intentional relation.

But isn't there an obvious objection to the 'surrogate object' solution? Jake wants a gold mine. He doesn't want a content. A gold mine is a physical thing. But whatever a content is, it is not a physical thing. A content is either mental as a part of the intentional mental state, or it is an abstract item of some sort. To appreciate this, let us consider more carefully what a content is. A content is an intermediary entity, roughly analogous to a Fregean sense (Sinn), which mediates between mind and external concrete reality. And like Fregean senses, contents do not reside in external concrete reality. They are either immanent to consciousness like Twardowski's contents, or abstracta like Frege's senses. And just as linguistic reference to the planet Venus is achieved via the sense of 'morning star' or via the sense of 'evening star,' mental reference to an object is achieved via a content. To employ the old Brentano terminology of presentations (Vorstellungen), the object is that which is presented in a presentation whereas the content is that through which it is presented.

Now my point against Peter is that when I want something that doesn't exist, my wanting cannot be said to relate me to a content. My wanting involves a content no doubt, but the content is not the object. Why not? Well, if I want a flying horse, I want a physical thing, an animal; but no content is a physical thing, let alone an animal. When Bobby Darin pined after his Dream Lover, it was something lusciously concrete and physical that he was pining after.

Suppose I am imagining Pegasus and thinking: Pegasus does not exist. The imagining is an intentional state that involves a content, the mental image. But this mental image exists. So it cannot be the mental image that I am thinking does not exist. It is Pegasus himself that I am thinking does not exist. And therein lies the puzzle.

Suppose Peter responds as follows. "I grant you that it is not the mental image that I am thinking does not exist. For, as you point out, the image does exist. What I am doing is thinking that the mental image is not a mental image of anything. So when I imagine Pegasus and think: Pegasus does not exist, the object relatum is an existent item, the Pegasus image, and what I am thinking about it is that it is not an image of anything."

But this too is problematic. For the nonexistence of Pegasus cannot be identified with the Pegasus-images's not being an image of anything. And this for the simple reason that an objective fact such as the nonexistence of Pegasus cannot depend on the existence of mental images. There are times and possible worlds in which there are no mental images and yet at those times and worlds Pegasus does not exist.

But Peter persists: "Well, I can say that when I am thinking about Pegasus I am thinking about a necessarily existent conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are being a horse, having wings, etc., and when I think that Pegasus does not exist I am thinking that this conjunctive property is not instantiated. And when I think that Pegasus is winged, I am thinking that the conjunctive property has being winged as one of its conjuncts."

This is better, but still problematic. If Peter wants Pegasus, then presumably what he wants on his analysis is not the conjunctive property in question, but the being instantiated of this property. Being instantiated, however, is relational not monadic: if the conjunctive property is instantiated it is instantiated by an individual. And which individual must it be? Why, Pegasus! The analysis, it appears, is viciously circular. Let's review.

Peter wants to say that intentionality is a relation and that the holding of a relation entails the existence of all its relata. But Pegasus does not exist. To want Pegasus, then, cannot be to stand in relation to Pegasus, but to a surrogate object. If you say that the surrogate object is a necessarily existent property, then the problem is that wanting Peagsus, an animal, is not wanting a causally inert abstract object. If. on the other hand, you say that to want Pegasus is to want the being instantiated of that abstract object, then you want the being instantiated of that abstract object by existing Pegasus -- in which case we have made no progress since Pegasus does not exist!

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Over Sunday breakfast at Cindy's, a hardscrabble Mesa, Arizona eatery not unwelcoming to metaphysicians and motorcyclists alike, Peter Lupu fired a double-barreled objection at my solution to Deck's Paradox. The target, however, was not hit. My solution requires that (a) concrete particulars can be coherently 'assayed' (to use a favorite word of Gustav Bergmann), or given an ontological analysis in terms of constituents some or all of which are universals, and (b) modally contingent concrete particulars can be coherently assayed as composed of necessary beings.

Peter denies both of (a) and (b), without good reason as it seems to me. Let's begin with some definitions pithily presented.

Definitions

Abstract =df causally inert.

Concrete =df not abstract.

Universal =df repeatable (multiply exemplifiable).

Particular =df unrepeatable.

Modally contingent=df existent in some but not all broadly-logically possible worlds.

Modally necessary =df not modally contingent and not modally impossible.

Ad (a). One form of the question is: Could a concrete particular be coherently construed as a bundle universals? Peter thinks not: "But the unification of two universals U and V is another universal W, not a particular." (From a two page handout he brought to breakfast. How many people that you know bring handouts to breakfast?!) Now bundle-of-universals theories of particulars face various standard objections, but as far as I know no one in the literature has made Peter's objection. Presumably for good reason: it is a bad objection that confuses conjunction with the bundling relation.

We understand conjunction as a propositional connective. Given the propositions a is red and b is round we understand that the conjunction a is red & b is round is true iff both conjuncts are true. It is clear that a conjunction of propositions is itself a proposition. By a slight extension we can speak meaningfully of a conjunction of propositional functions, and from there we can move to talk of conjunctions of properties. Assuming that properties are universals, we can speak of conjunctions of universals. It is clear that a conjunction of universals is itself a universal. Thus the conjunction of Redness and Roundness is itself a universal, a multiply exemplifiable entity. I will use 'Konjunction' to single out conjunction of universals.

Now it should be obvious that a bundle of universals is not a conjunction of universals. Let K be the Konjunction operator: it operates upon universals to form universals. Let B be the bundling operator: it operates upon universals to form particulars. Bundling is not Konjunction. So far, then, Peter seems to have failed to make an elementary distinction.

Now suppose Peter objects that nothing could operate upon universals to form a particular. Universals in, universals out. Then I say that he is just wrong: the set-theoretical braces -- { } -- denote an operator that operates upon items of any category to form sets of those items. Now it should be obvious that a set of universals is not itself a universal, but a particular. A Konjunction of universals is a universal, but a set of universals is not a universal, but a particular. The Konjunction of Redness and Roundness is exemplifiable; but no set is exemplifiable.

Am I saying that a bundle of universals is a set of universals? No. I am saying that it is false to assume that any operation upon universals will result in a universal. What I have said so far suffices to refute Peter's first objection, which was that the unification of two universals yields a third universal. You can see that to be false by noting that the unification into a set of two or more universals does not yield a universal but a particular.

Ad (b). Our second question is whether a contingent particular could have as ontological constituents necessary beings. Peter thinks not. He thinks that anything composed of necessary beings will itself be a necessary being. And so, given that universals are necessary beings, and that concrete particulars are composed of universals, no concrete particular can be modally contingent.

This objection fares no better than the first. Suppose Redness and Roundness are compresent. (You will recall that Russell took the bundling relation to be the compresence relation. See An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, 1940, Chapter 6.) Each of these universals, we are assuming, is a necessary being. But it doesn't follow that their compresence is necessary; it could easily be contingent. Here and now I see a complete complex of compresence two of whose constituent universals are Redness and Roundness. But surely there is no necessity that these two universals co-occur or be com-present. After all, Redness is often encountered compresent with shapes that are logically incompatible with Roundness. Compresence, then, is a contingent relation. It follows that complexes of compresence are contingent. Necessarily, Rednessexists. Necessarily, Roundness exists. But it does not follow that, necessarily, Redness and Roundness are compresent: surely there are possible worlds in which they are not.

Peter's argument for his conclusion commits the fallacy of composition:

1. Every universal necessarily exists.

2. Every concrete particular is composed of universals. Therefore,

3. Every concrete particular is composed of things that necessarily exist. Therefore,

4. Every concrete particular necessarily exists.

The move from (3) to(4) is the fallacy of composition. One cannot assume that if the parts of a whole have a certain property, then the whole has those properties.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

“Muslims aren't very 'liberal,' are they? They are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior. Now the touchstone of classical liberalism is toleration. Toleration is good, but it has limits. (See the posts in the category Toleration.) So why should we tolerate them when they work to undermine our way of life? The U. S. Constitution is not a suicide pact. We are under no obligation to tolerate the intolerant.”

Now I personally know a number of Muslims. I can assure you that at least one of them is very liberal, at least one of them is tolerant in attitudes and behavior, and at least one of them is not working to “undermine our way of life.” The three universal statements that I see staring out at us from the quoted paragraph are all then false, as even the most rudimentary acquaintance with old Aristotle’s logic and its “square of opposition” would have you see.

I have no doubt that Prof. Hennessey knows at least one liberal Muslim, at least one tolerant Muslim, and at least one Muslim who is not intent on undermining the American way of life. So it seems that Prof. Hennessey conclusively refuted Bill’s statement. Did he?

Let us distinguish between four categories of what the term ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ might mean:

(a) ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ might refer to a *religion* just like ‘Christianity’, ‘Judaism’, ‘Buddhism’, etc;

(Peter is of course aware that the noun 'Muslim' cannot be used to refer to the religion, Islam; his point is that 'Muslim' as an adjective in 'Muslim religion' can used to refer to the religion, Islam.)

(b) ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ might refer to a *class of people* whose heritage is Islam or adopted Islam as their religion;

(c) ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ might refer to *Islamism*, a radical form of Islam that declared a war on Western Culture;

(d) ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ might refer to a country that has Islam as its official religion.

We are now in the position to evaluate Bill’s claim and Prof. Hennessey’s critical comments as quoted above relative to each of the above categories. Clearly, Prof. Hennessey is right when Bill’s claim is evaluated relative to category (b). But then again no one who reads Bill’s post thinks that he meant to say that every person whose heritage is Islam or adopted this religion is intolerant, anti-liberal, and intent to undermine Western Culture (See Bill’s reply in his Addendum and Corrigendum (7/22). Nevertheless, Prof. Hennessey scores one run here.

What about Bill’s statement interpreted in light of category (a)? One way of so doing is asking the following question: Does Islam as a religion promote the values of liberalism, toleration, and the Western way of life? I challenge Prof. Hennessey to answer this question. So far as I know, Islam as a religion does not promote any of these values. So at least in the eyes of this umpire Bill scores one run here. Thus far, the score is tied one to one.

When it comes to (c), the verdict is fairly clear: I doubt that anyone, including Prof. Hennessey, would challenge the notion that Islamism or Muslim Extremists abhor liberalism, toleration, and the Western way of life. So, what about (d)? Once again I think it is fairly clear that in most Muslim countries there is very little tolerance of other religions and certainly it is prohibited and dangerous to promote alternative religions. Moreover, most of the countries that have Islam as their official religion are anti-liberal and do not tolerate very well the Western way of life. At least this is so for the last ten or so years.

So it seems that Bill is right on three counts, whereas Prof. Hennessey is right on one count. Final score: three to one in favor of Bill, unless Prof. Hennessey wishes to challenge this umpire's score card. I invite him to do so.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

As Bill notes, we are attempting to secure and study a copy of James Anderson’s book, Paradox in Christian Theology. (Publication details here, including links to reviews.) Meanwhile, I will propose here some tentative observations that Anderson’s book may or may not have addressed. These observations are inspired by the following point Bill makes in a post above as well as by some conversations we had about the subject:

“…if I cannot see that a proposition is rationally acceptable (because it appears contradictory to me) then I wouldn't know what proposition I was accepting.”

A similar point is made by Richard Cartwright in On the Logical Problem of the Trinity: "Nor is a mystery supposed to be unintelligible, in the sense that the words in which it is expressed simply cannot be understood. After all, we are asked to believe the propositions expressed by the words, not simply that the words express some true propositions or other, we know not which."

1). Let us agree that a Trinitarian Sentence (TS) is such that

(i) The Bible entails TS;

(ii) The surface structure (SS) of TS exhibits the logical form of a contradiction;

(iii) We are not in the position currently and may not be in the position in our present form of existence ever to construct a contradiction free formulation or deep structure (DS) for TS;

Example of a TS: "The Father is God, the Son is God, the Father is not the Son, and there is exactly one God." The surface structure of this sentence is contradictory.

Monday, February 15, 2010

(This gem is pulled up from the vasty deeps of the ComBox to where it may shine in a more fitting setting. Minor editing, bolding, and comments in blue by BV.)

1). Let us say that a *real* contradiction is a sentence which comes out false according to every possible model (M): i.e., M = language-plus-domain-plus-interpretation, where an ‘interpretation’ is a complete and systematic assignment of extensions to the non-logical terms of the language (L). We assume that L is a well developed natural language such as English and we have a sufficiently rich domain that includes whatever entities are required to implement an interpretation that will suffice for theological purposes.

1.1) Note: We are assuming throughout classical logic in two sense: (a) the logical constants are interpreted classically; (b) there are no *real* true contradictions.

1.2) Sentence S is a *real* contradiction just in case there is no *normal model* M in which it comes out true. A normal model in this context is one which features an interpretation that assigns extensions to the non-logical terms in the usual way prior to resolving any potential ambiguities. On a realist conception of truth, S [if contradictory] has no truth-maker (T-maker) in any normal model or possible world.

2) Let us now define at least one sense of an *apparent contradiction* in model theoretic terms. Let S be a sentence expressible in L and suppose S comes out false in every normal model M. S appears to be a contradiction. Is it really a contradiction? Prof. Anderson maintains that there are sentences which are contradictory in every normal model, but are non-contradictory in some other models of L. How can that be? [Shouldn't Peter have 'false' for contradictory and 'true' for non-contradictory in the preceding sentence? After all, in (1) we are told in effect that contradictoriness is falsehood in every model, which implies that noncontradictoriness is truth in some model. 'Contradictory in every model' is a pleonastic expression.]

Saturday, January 23, 2010

In this installment, Peter Lupu, atheist, defends the logical coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity. My critical comments follow in blue.

It may be somewhat of an astonishment to those who know me well that I should venture to defend the doctrine of the Trinity. I am not a Christian; I am not religious; I am an atheist; and I have at least on one occasion privately expressed to Bill my reservations about the coherence of the Trinity doctrine. Nevertheless, there is a question here that deserves exploring. What is the question?

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

1) Theists, like their atheist adversaries, consider murder a severe breach of morality. Unlike causing a minor physical injury to another or damaging or even completely destroying their home, car, or other belongings, murder is considered to be an altogether different matter. The emphasis upon the moral gravity of murder compared to these other moral infractions is, of course, justified and the justification rests in large part upon the finality and irreversible nature of the consequences for the victim. We can perhaps put these consequences as follows: once dead, always dead! Compared to those other infractions where we can perhaps assess the damage and convert such assessment into some sort of tangible remedy, we have no clue how to even begin such appraisal of harm when it comes to a matter such as ceasing to exist forever. If death would have been a temporary state, such as a long sleep for instance, from which one returns into being once again, I am certain we would have found a way to assess the damage done and assign suitable remedy. But, of course, death is not a temporary state such as sleep. Or is it?

Saturday, December 19, 2009

I've made it clear that I think eliminative materialism (EM) is a "lunatic philosophy of mind" to borrow a phrase from A. W. Collins. Peter Lupu basically agrees though he may not care to put the point in such an intemperate way. What follows is an excerpt from a recent e-mail of his. Since I want to be fair to EM-ists, I want to suggest a way they may be able to counter the following objection Peter raises.

Scientism is my label for what any one who takes science seriously shouldbelieve, and scientistic is just an in-your face adjective for accepting science’s description of the nature of reality. You don’t have to be a scientist to be scientistic. In fact, most scientists aren’t.

A guest post by Peter Lupu. Minor edits by BV. His comments in blue at the end.

Suppose I am a naturalist. Then I take science seriously just as Alex Rosenberg counsels.I also provisionally trust Rosenberg's argument, thereby, I find myself inclined to believe the conclusions of Rosenberg’s argument. One of these conclusions is

Saturday, December 05, 2009

This is a guest post by Peter Lupu. Lightly edited by BV with his comments in blue.

In a post titled Imago Dei, (December 4, 2009), Bill clarifies the meaning of this important theistic concept. However, in his typical way, he does much more. He offers us guidelines to see and appreciate the broader implication of a proper understanding of imago Dei. In the present post I shall confine myself to the task of fleshing out these implications, as I understand them. In subsequent posts, and with the gracious cooperation of Bill, I will try to wrestle with these implications to the best of my abilities. I should make clear at the outset that I agree with Bill’s exposition of the meaning and significance of imago Dei within a theistic conception. If there is anything with which I disagree, or have some reservations, is the principal conclusion Bill draws from the concept of imago Dei regarding the meaning of life.